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How Certain is Science?


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1 Department of Mathematics, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh 786 004, India
 

What is truth? What is reality? How certain are we regarding any given fact? These are questions pondered upon by philosophers from time immemorial. This search for the nature of knowledge has culminated in different epistemic theories of truth. In this note I delve into this aspect in the field of science. Many people outside the field of science often confuse it with certainty. They think that what science says is infallible; its predictions are 100% accurate/reliable. This is perhaps due to the high precision and accuracy with which science predicts different future events like eclipses, time of sunrise and sunset, launching of spacecraft and rockets, etc. However, a close scrutiny will reveal that in the midst of these predictions there are errors and uncertainties involved.
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  • How Certain is Science?

Abstract Views: 230  |  PDF Views: 72

Authors

Tazid Ali
Department of Mathematics, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh 786 004, India

Abstract


What is truth? What is reality? How certain are we regarding any given fact? These are questions pondered upon by philosophers from time immemorial. This search for the nature of knowledge has culminated in different epistemic theories of truth. In this note I delve into this aspect in the field of science. Many people outside the field of science often confuse it with certainty. They think that what science says is infallible; its predictions are 100% accurate/reliable. This is perhaps due to the high precision and accuracy with which science predicts different future events like eclipses, time of sunrise and sunset, launching of spacecraft and rockets, etc. However, a close scrutiny will reveal that in the midst of these predictions there are errors and uncertainties involved.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv111%2Fi10%2F1587-1588